September 2024
Bio Note: I recently adopted a mix-breed dog we named Honey. I am teaching Speech & Debate this year which includes poetry and poetic interpretation. The poem "Lighthouse Point" was written for my three-year-old son in 2000. "Why Humans Invented Poetry" postulates a possible theory.
Lighthouse Point
Santa Cruz, CA
November 24. 2000
A child notices his shadow
Stretching long across the lawn
To where the cliffs surrender to the sea.
His father stands next to him.
Their linked shadows bleed together
into the late afternoon autumn sun.
An old surfer, who once rode
long balsa boards in the frigid surf,
stops to tell the two of a sand bank
where children learn to surf.
That’s where we all began, he says.
It’s where we all return.
The waves at the point rise
three heads.
Young men sleak as sea lions
in black wet suits takeoff on
fiberglass boards cutting
the immense liquid curls.
The child sticks his head
through the fence
to throw a rock into the sea.
His father holds him back
for the moment.
Why Humans Invented Poetry
They observed pelicans in flight,
fascinated by their airborne grace
compared to the clumsy waddle
of earthbound webbed feet.
They remained attracted to these fowl
though the birds offered no
practical food value, marveling
how pelicans gracefully skim
the tops of waves, each bird in its turn
dipping its wings before rising
effortlessly to resume their space
aligned in near-perfect symmetrical flight
while humans remained grounded to
an alphabet, odd cuneiform symbols
carved in clay, perplexed--how to record
the sound of soaring silence above
the roaring waves.
Therefore humans invented poetry.
Their words flowed across the page
graceful as the flight of pelicans,
each line a bird with its unique being,
all lines strung together, stanzas in flight.
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